the following is an extract from the chapter 'the small yin' from 'roule britannia' by william fotheringham. i am extremely grateful to william and yellow jersey press (random house publishing) for permission to reproduce on the post.you can read a review of 'roule britannia' here

If the cynicism always seemed like a front, that was because there were plenty of signs that Millar was a man who did care. To start with, there was his obsessive devotion to the details of his profession. The photographs from his career were impeccably kept. When we visited him for interviews, he would come a little way towards the motorway with us, to make sure we didn't get lost. Most tellingly, in the early 1990s there was no 'trophy room' in his home near Troyes, but there was a loft in the barn with a pile of Samsonite suitcases, each containing religiously folded team jerseys from every squad he'd ridden for, and all the race leaders' and King of the Mountains jerseys from every event he'd performed well in.

The barriers remained after retirement: Millar's answerphone specified that the caller would receive a reply 'if it's necessary'. But he did not view the entire world with a jaundiced eye. He would mock the affected and pretentious among his fellows, yet his tribute to Sean Kelly (Cycle Sport, January 1995) would have put most professional journalists to shame for its clarity and sincerity. Gilchrist, Bilsland, Sunderland and Smith make it clear that once a person had got through the barriers and earned his respect, Millar was a good man to know.

Millar has also taken a radically different attitude to retirement from that of his peers. Unlike Barry Hoban, he was actually given the chance to pass on his knowledge when he was appointed as national road-race trainer in 1997. In this capacity, he had the unconventional habit of racing his bike in the same events as the senior riders he was managing, to assess their progress. For all his experience, however, he did not seem to have the motivational skills to fire up his charges, and the post became redundant with the advent of National Lottery funding.

That disillusioned him as well. 'I tried to give something back, and the BCF job was a good example. I spent six months learning how to do the job, like admin, planning, what had and hadn't been done, then they appointed a performance director who told me I wouldn't be needed at the end of my contract, no explanation other than that the budget didn't allow it. I felt like my being there was to appease a movement of discontent ... it was as if my presence was some evidence of progress being made. I felt I'd been given a place that belonged to the establishment and it was only a matter of time before they got it back. I've moved on.'

He continued to coach one Scottish rider of promise, the son of a friend, for a while. He wrote bike tests for procycling magazine, he learned tae kwon do, he rode his motorbike, he occasionally managed the Scotland amatuer team. He did not want a career: his view was that he had spent most of his life having to do things and he wanted a break from obligation.

Millar denies that he has cut himself off from his sport. 'I don't go to cycle races because I have other interests, and I'd be jealous that I can't ride that fast any more.' Given his intensely competitive nature, that is easy to imagine. He adds: 'I don't seek to be involved, but I don't put it down. I'll cycle if I feel like it, but I have no desire to go far or fast, or hurt myself in the process. What I find is that people, public, fans, whatever you call them, they think they know you and they expect you to behave as you did when you were competing. It's as if you don't live in the real world.'

Be that as it may, Millar is inevitably missed. What he achieved is too significant simply to be forgotten. I wouldn't pretend to be among those who know him well, but I am one of those who wish he were around. He is fine company, with few airs and graces, and he is prepared to open himself up in a way that very few athletes do. To do so cannot be easy, revealing as it does something of the vulnerability that made him put up those barriers in the first place.

To understand his current absence, it is perhaps necessary to look back to his beginnings. From the days when he 'drummed up' at his own fire when out with the Glasgow Wheelers, Millar has always approached cycling in his own way, rather than doing what anyone else might expect of him. Why should he do what is expected now? Those who ponder his whereabouts and fell he has turned his back should perhaps wonder whether they are asking for too much. As Millar told me in 1998: 'People want sport to be like life as it should be, without any of the bad sides, an ideal. Why should sport be different? in fact, it's just like life as it is.'